This continues our series examining rising antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment on college campuses in the United States.
Founded in 1965, the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) prides itself on being one of the most diverse campuses in the United States, highlighting its welcoming of large numbers of students from multi-ethnic backgrounds for whom English is not their first language.
However, what most may not be aware of is that despite the college’s “inclusive” credentials, it is currently grappling with a festering problem of antisemitism, often cloaked in anti-Zionism.
Indeed, a bombshell report released earlier this year revealed that the issue of anti-Jewish bigotry at the establishment has become so widespread it was described as “disturbing.”
Read More: Antisemitism Masked as Anti-Israel Bias at Berkeley, America’s ‘Most Prestigious College’
Looking back more than five years, the report found that the UIC branch of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) had stepped up its activities to mount what could only be described as a campaign of hatred directed at both Jews on campus, and equally distressingly, those in the wider community.
The SJP is, of course, no stranger to controversy.
The organization, which has chapters in universities across the US, has a well-documented history of disseminating vicious anti-Israel propaganda and of vilifying Jewish students. There have also been numerous instances of overt antisemitism – despite the group claiming to reject such bigotry.
Indeed, SJP is a major proponent of the racist Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and “Israeli Apartheid Week” events, which are used to spread anti-Israel libels and convert students to their cause.
The report showed that in the academic year 2020-21, the UIC chapter of SJP turned its attention further afield than the campus for the first time, launching a campaign that targeted Chicago’s wider Jewish community.
In a bid to recruit so-called “intersectional” allies, the group mounted an initiative against the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago (JUF), labeling the non-profit organization, which provides charitable assistance to half-a-million residents of the city regardless of their faith, a “racist,” “homophobic,” “Islamophobic” and “anti-Arab” endeavor.
Among other activities, SJP attempted to force the University of Illinois at Chicago leadership to sever ties with the JUF for sponsoring a Zoom talk by Professor Gabi Bin Nun of Ben-Gurion University at the college’s School of Public Health. A petition circulated urged the UIC to cancel any speakers who were representatives of Israeli academic institutions; to incorporate the “study of the occupation of Palestine into the curriculum”; and claimed: “Palestine experiences some of the worst public health crises on an international scale due to colonization, military occupation, and apartheid.”
SJP supporters later disrupted the Zoom meeting by “persistently asking questions regarding Palestine” after the event went ahead despite their objections.
Emily Briskman, the associate vice president of JUF Campus Affairs and Executive Director of the Hillels of Illinois, observed:
We believe deeply in freedom of speech, but we also know that all too often rather than appropriate critical conversations about Israel, we see antisemitism and harassment of Zionist [groups] on campus.”
Incidentally, the actions of SJP at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, another college in the state’s trio of higher education institutions, played a role in prompting an investigation by the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights.
One such incident involved a Jewish student who was staffing a pro-Israel stall at an event allegedly being called a “Nazi,” a “white supremacist” and a “colonialist.”
When queried about this incident, SJP President Sofia Sinnokrot said she had no recollection of it and argued that sometimes the actions of those outside her organization are attributed to the group.
In May, at the height of the Hamas-initiated conflict with Israel, the SJP scored what some might consider a victory for promoting the concept of intersectionality when a number of bodies issued separate statements condemning the Jewish state for defending itself in the face of a barrage of indiscriminate rocket fire from US-designated Palestinian terrorists.
For example, the Global Asian Studies Program at UIC published a statement on its website that branded Israel a “settler colonial state power” while reaffirming its commitment to supporting the BDS movement.
The Gender and Women’s Studies Program at the college, along with other departments at various universities, echoed this sentiment in a statement that claimed the Jewish state was perpetrating “ethnonationalist violence.”
However, as HonestReporting CEO Daniel Pomerantz pointed out in an op-ed published last year, the promotion of the notion of intersectionality by students could have wider repercussions for academic freedom and intellectual inquisitiveness:
But even if you have never stepped foot on the campus, what happened is a perfect case-study in the perils of what is known as ‘intersectionality,’ whereby a variety of causes are blended together. The result is that separate issues become conflated, complex issues are simplified and important nuances are lost, which causes harm to all parties.”
There are also recorded instances of antisemitism at the University of Illinois at Chicago that date back further, including a particularly ugly incident in 2017 that made newspaper headlines in which at least 100 posters were distributed on campus that called for an end to “Jewish privilege.”
Playing on familiar antisemitic tropes, the flier suggested that Jews have a disproportionate amount of wealth in the United States.
It was described by one Jewish student as an act of “pure hatred and intolerance.”
The university in response issued a letter from Chancellor Michael D. Amiridis condemning the posters that “defame, insult and negatively portray Jewish members of our campus community.”
Yet, instead of simply denouncing the blatant case of Jew-hatred, Amiridis also encouraged “all members of our university to exercise their right to free speech in a manner that recognizes these principles and avoids prejudice or stereotypes.”
Just days after the email was sent to staff and students, another stack of fliers was discovered (one was tacked onto a public bulletin board) that included the vile suggestion that the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust was inflated: “…But when you question the 6 million [Jews killed by the Nazis] they put you in jail in 17 countries.”
The fliers also maliciously and falsely stated that “Zionists” operate and own the “largest Concentration Camp in the world today” in reference to the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.
The University of Illinois at Chicago is not alone in wrestling with rising antisemitism and hatred directed toward Israel, but for a school that prides itself on diversity, it will still come as a surprise to many.
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